Four Seasons Owner Breaks ‘No Dogs’ Rule for Kids’ Book

Alex von Bidder, owner of The Four Seasons, has penned a children’s book, Wiggens Learns His Manners at the Four Seasons Restaurant, which imagines a poorly behaved dog learning the finer points of fine dining. It will publish in August complete with blurbs from Martha Stewart, Tom Brokaw, Tim Zagat, Mary Higgins Clark, and others who’ll never again have trouble scoring a last-minute lunch resy, if they ever did. As with the Four Seasons mockumentary, there are loving jabs at the restaurant and its customers (“How long does a bone take? Don’t they know who I am?” a poodle complains; “If I don’t get my regular table, I will start to yelp!” grumbles another; and “This place is going to the DOGS!” says a pit bull). There’s a funny celebrity sighting, too (of Britney Spaniel), but the humor is dampened when Wiggens tours the kitchen and meets the head chef, a Dalmatian presumably based on the late Christian Albin. Ah well, all dogs go to heaven.